


The Space Between Breaths

by Miaou Jones (miaoujones)



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beginnings, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 20:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7479522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/pseuds/Miaou%20Jones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He stops touching his shoulder, looks at the ocean, doesn't wish to cross it. Doesn't wish to go home. He's told them that enough times that they've stopped offering, stopped asking. He doesn't have a home anymore and they must know that because none of the doctors and officials who have visited him here have asked him why. The green-eyed priest did, once. Only once. Sousuke didn't answer him either, not with words anyhow, but the priest must have read something in his expression or body language because he had closed his eyes and bowed his head and never brought it up again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between Breaths

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2016, bonus round 4, for this prompt: "But I don’t want comfort. I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." – Aldous Huxley, _Brave New World_. Some of Sousuke's dialogue paraphrases and is taken directly from the prompt.

The day his country surrendered, Sousuke's squad kept fighting. They weren't overenthusiastic patriots, weren't caught up in an unstoppable fervor of battle: their communications officer had been shot in the head, right through the ear, and somehow no one had taken over for him. So they kept fighting, not for honor or valor or victory; they kept fighting because... they just kept fighting, no because, no rhyme or reason.

Sometimes, Sousuke thinks, staring out the window at an ocean he's become all too familiar with but can't think of as home; sometimes Sousuke thinks that's why they were fighting all along.

In any case that's why they fought that day. Whether the other side knew his country had surrendered, Sousuke neither knows nor cares to find out. That knowledge won't change anything, won't bring back his arm.

He touches his shoulder without looking at it, gaze fixed on the all too familiar ocean. It doesn't hurt. He was unconscious for the pain, knocked out by the projectile that took off his arm, kept under by drugs administered on the spot when he was found alive. The other side's doctors, when he was brought here still out, gave him an implant that blocks the pain. So he's been told. In any case, he doesn't feel any physical pain from his shoulder or his phantom limb.

He never got to say goodbye to it, his arm.

He stops touching his shoulder, looks at the ocean, doesn't wish to cross it. Doesn't wish to go home. He's told them that enough times that they've stopped offering, stopped asking. He doesn't have a home anymore and they must know that because none of the doctors and officials who have visited him here have asked him why he doesn't want to go.

The priest did, once. Only once. Sousuke didn't answer him either, not with words anyhow, but the priest must have read something in his expression or body language because he had closed his eyes and bowed his head and never brought it up again.

He's not actually a priest—the religion here uses different titles and honorifics, but the not-priest said Sousuke could call him that if it was easier for him. Sousuke doesn't call him that because it's easier but he doesn't tell the priest he does it for a strange kind of amusement that even he himself is not sure he finds funny.

The priest is the only one who still visits him regularly. Even his doctors are different, now that they've moved him here from the main hospital. There are other veterans here, from both sides; it seems Sousuke is not the only one who doesn't care to go back to the country that sent him here.

The priest still comes to see him here and the last time he did Sousuke asked him why. He thought "why" and "because" had stopped meaning anything, but he'd heard himself asking, caught himself looking into the priest's eyes for the answer.

The priest had looked back at him with those clear green eyes of his, dazzling as the waters of the jade lake Sousuke grew up next to, just as calm. The priest had looked at him with that clear, dazzling, calm gaze of his and had asked if there was an answer that would satisfy Sousuke.

"I don't know," Sousuke had heard himself say.

The priest had nodded, then bowed his head. Sousuke thought maybe he was praying but then the priest said, "My order believes in the comfort of all living souls. If my visits do not bring you comfort, or if—if you do not wish for comfort, I shall discontinue."

The hesitation stayed with Sousuke long after the priest left that day, with the promise of another visit another day. He didn't know what to make of that hesitation but he found himself dwelling in it, living in the breath between words, the space between breaths...

Sousuke takes a breath and turns from the window as the priest, after knocking, enters the room.

"I've been thinking about what you said," Sousuke says before the priest can say anything. He gazes into the green so like the only place he's ever truly thought of as home, gazes into the green gazing back at him, holds himself steady. "About your purpose."

He feels his own hesitation, draws breath around it. "And my wishes."

They looks at one another.

"I wish for your visits," Sousuke says, "but I don't wish for comfort."

When the priest fails to break the gaze, Sousuke does it, getting out of bed and going to the window. He looks out, not at the ocean, not at anything; he closes his eyes. He doesn't think about his words, he lets them out like breath: "I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

And then he is breathing only breath.

He breathes for some moments at the window.

He hears movement. The door shutting.

He turns around—

The priest is standing naked in the middle of the room. "I want that, too." He smiles, as calm and dazzling as his gaze. "I want all of that, Sousuke."

When their lips touch, in the breath between words, the space between breaths, something stirs inside Sousuke, as if luminous green has got inside him, taken root, and begun to grow new life.


End file.
